A Walk in the Woods

first time since Amicalola I took off my jacket and realized with mild perplexity that I had
absolutely no place to put it. I tied it to my pack with a strap and trudged on.
We labored four miles up and over Blood Mountain--at 4,461 feet the highest and
toughest eminence on the trail in Georgia-- then began a steep and exciting two-mile
descent towards Neels Gap. Exciting because there was a shop at Neels Gap, at a place
called the Walasi-Yi Inn, where you could buy sandwiches and ice cream. At about half
past one, we heard a novel sound--motor traffic--and a few minutes later we emerged
from the woods onto U.S. Highway 19 and 129, which despite having two numbers was
really just a back road through a high pass between wooded nowheres. Directly across
the road was the Walasi-Yi Inn, a splendid stone building constructed by the Civilian
Conservation Corps (a kind of army of the unemployed) during the Great Depression and
now a combination hiking outfitters, grocery, bookshop, and youth hostel. We hastened
across the road--positively scurried across-- and went inside.
Now it may seem to stretch credibility to suggest that things like a paved highway, the
whoosh of passing cars, and a proper building could seem exciting and unfamiliar after a
scant five days in the woods, but in fact it was so. Just passing through a door, being
inside, surrounded by walls and a ceiling, was novel. And the Walasi-Yi's stuff was, well, I
can't begin to describe how wonderful it was. There was a single modest-sized
refrigerator filled with fresh sandwiches, soft drinks, cartons of juice, and perishables like
cheese, and Katz and I stared into it for ages, dumbly captivated. I was beginning to
appreciate that the central feature of life on the Appalachian Trail is deprivation, that the
whole point of the experience is to remove yourself so thoroughly from the conveniences
of everyday life that the most ordinary things--processed cheese, a can of pop gorgeously
beaded with condensation--fill you with wonder and gratitude. It is an intoxicating
experience to taste Coca-Cola as if for the first time and to be conveyed to the very brink
of orgasm by white bread. Makes all the discomfort worthwhile, if you ask me.
Katz and I bought two egg salad sandwiches each, some potato chips, chocolate bars,
and soft drinks and went to a picnic table in back, where we ate with greedy smackings
and expressions of rapture, then returned to the refrigerator to stare in wonder some
more. The Walasi-Yi, we discovered, provided other services to bona fide hikers for a
small fee--laundry center, showers, towel rental--and we greedily availed ourselves of all
those. The shower was a dribbly, antiquated affair, but the water was hot and I have
never, and I mean never, enjoyed a grooming experience more. I watched with the
profoundest satisfaction as five days of grime ran down my legs and out the drainhole,
and noticed with astonished gratitude that my body had taken on a noticeably svelter
profile. We did two loads of laundry, washed out our cups and food bowls and pots and
pans, bought and sent postcards, phoned home, and stocked up liberally on fresh and
packaged foods in the shop.
The Walasi-Yi was run by an Englishman named Justin and his American wife, Peggy,
and we fell into a running conversation with them as we drifted in and out through the
afternoon. Peggy told me that already they had had a thousand hikers through since
January 1, with the real start of the hiking season still to come. They were a kindly
couple, and I got the sense that Peggy in particular spends a lot of her time talking people
into not quitting. Only the day before, a young man from Surrey had asked them to call
him a cab to take him to Atlanta. Peggy had almost persuaded him to persevere, to try for